MARTINEZ — The City Council could decide Wednesday whether to call for a special election on the future of Pine Meadow Golf Course, as a local group has gathered enough petition signatures to challenge the council’s January decision to rezone that land to allow houses.

Or a decision may be delayed to another upcoming council meeting — at least Mayor Rob Schroder hopes so. He’ll be out of town Wednesday on a business trip to Spokane, Washington.

“It will be the first meeting I’ve missed in several years,” Schroder said Monday. “Whether or not they’ll make a decision without me there, I don’t know.”

Wednesday’s meeting begins at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 525 Henrietta St.

The future of Pine Meadow has been an emotional issue pitting the golf course owners, who want to sell what they say has become a money-losing business in recent years, and the group Friends of Pine Meadow, which wants to head off residential development there.

The City Council on Jan. 21 changed the zoning of Pine Meadow’s 25.9 acres north of Center Avenue and west of Vine Hill Road from open space/recreation uses to residential use, up to six houses per acre. The council vote was 4 to 1, with Lara DeLaney dissenting.

The council’s contention is that the Pine Meadow land isn’t really open space, given its commercial use as a golf course for the past 60 years. It is also close to two existing (and adjacent) parks, Hidden Valley and Hidden Lakes, which together cover 42 acres.

Developer DeNova Homes proposes building a mix of one- and two-story houses on the golf course land.

Shortly after the Jan. 21 council vote, the Friends of Pine Meadow group got moving with its petition drive, asking people to endorse a reversal of the council’s zoning of the golf course land from open space/recreation to housing. On March 3, the Contra Costa County Election Department verified 2,858 signatures on the petition; the minimum number required was 2,149.

“It isn’t just an issue in that (Pine Meadow) area; we had support from every part of the city,” said Tim Platt, who helped spearhead the referendum effort. He said the council’s Jan. 21 vote was “a direct assault on open space in Martinez in general” and would have set a bad precedent for open space preservation in Martinez.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the City Council could repeal its Jan. 21 decision to change the golf course’s zoning or call for a special election letting voters decide whether the golf course land should or shouldn’t host new houses. Such a special election could be held no sooner than mid-June, at an estimated cost of about $64,500.

Schroder suggested the matter could be put to a vote as part of the November 2016 general election. That is an option, and though that is a year and eight months away, he said it would be a lot cheaper than a special election.